Showing 1-16 of 65 Results.
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The first great novel of the 21st century uses the sinister beauty of the American Tax Code as a springboard from which to launch into a genuinely serious discussion of the origins and importance of civic responsibility amidst the hazy, blurred stupidity of a country in quick decline. Contrary to many reviews, I don't think it's about boredom, and it's certainly not boring. Another posthumous editor-to-manuscript resuscitation, the book hangs heavy with the clotted spectre of Wallace's suicide, which makes the writing glow all the more painfully through it.
Chris Ware - 02/10/2012 |
I was totally blown away by this collection of the new new new journalism, or however many "news" we’re up to these days. I think I like it as much – at times, even more – than Foster Wallace’s A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never do Again. And that, for me, is saying a lot.
Zadie Smith - 10/08/2012 |
A captivating biography that reveals Sweden’s greatest writer as a peculiarly lovable polymath.
John Banville - 18/06/2012 |
Humour and heart in the same breath, on every page.
Lauren Kate - 15/06/2012 |
David Mitchell writes - Measured, solid, real, honed, slow-burning, infused with a spiritual intelligence, lingering, imperishable.
David Mitchell - 11/03/2011 |
Corbett’s second novel is a haunting high-wire voice novel performed with brio. The on-the-run Traveller Anthony Sonaghan is a remarkable act of consciousness. In his plaintive, touching tone, he eats into your soul: so humble, so sad, so trapped, so true. I love his honest simplicity, his street poetry, his frustrated urge to break out of an enclosed life and how the book remains true to the narrowness of opportunity. The book’s form is its philosophy — that life is a patchwork of mess and regret and trying, but yet somehow we must live on. A contemporary Irish classic.
Paul Lynch - 09/05/2013 |
Perfect dystopia; an eye-opening read.
Lauren Kate - 15/06/2012 |
Vladimir Nabokov; Mary McCarthy |
Maybe the strangest thing about this book is remembering that it accompanied a BBC TV series in 1972. They don’t make ‘em like this anymore…. I’m fond of it because my father always kept it with him, wherever he lived, in flats or old people’s homes, long after he’d been divorced and had only about five books to his name. I think it represented to him a time when there was a stronger desire, in the culture, to bring complicated ideas to the masses. Anyway it’s a moving and polemical essay about property and art, seeing and owning.
Zadie Smith - 10/08/2012 |
This was one of the first novels where I remember being genuinely aware of the brilliance of the writing as I was reading it – there are sentences and paragraphs that still take my breath away now, despite the number of times I’ve read it. It’s a long, slow, relentless novel – a beautifully drawn mystery woven through a painfully moving story of class, classics and what it means to belong, carried along by a group of the most unforgettable characters you’ll ever come across.
Will Hill - 15/03/2012 |
The story of Mary Lennox, the unloved, unloveable orphan warmed to life along with her secret garden, gave me one of my first female heroes. They should try moving her from the kiss-of-death Children’s Classics shelf, let her slug it out with the newcomers and see what happens.
Moira Young - 09/08/2012 |
Even though he didn't actually write it himself, the voice and vernacular are all Keith. Particularly fascinating when describing London after the war.
Dylan Jones - 24/07/2012 |
Even if it wasn't so topical, I would have picked a Smiley novel. I love the understated style and beautiful story-telling. And I love spies.
Lindsey Davis - 20/03/2012 |
EMILY BRONTË: Wrote my favourite female character – Cathy in Wuthering Heights - and is also responsible for the first ghost scene I ever read. There was no sleeping for almost a week when Cathy tapped on Heathcliff’s window in the middle of the night and it’s a scene I return to again and again to experience the joy of taut prose and terror.
Sara Sheridan - 19/06/2012 |